His class is about an hour. So this is as you guys know the university of georgia at the brand new digital humanities lab. Im scott nesbit and this class is intro to Historic Preservation. So were here today trying to think a little bit about the Cultural Heritage of the American South especially after and during the american civil war. You know, its been in the news quite a bit lately, and so i think its a topic that folks are interested in Historic Preservation like yourselves have got to figure out. And we have a really fun opportunity, i would say, to try to make sense of all of this. So in order to do that i think we should go and think a little bit about not just where these monuments came from but the war out of which they came. At the beginning of the american civil war, United States soldiers seemed to take a great deal of care to leave private property, really all kinds of property alone. They really very strictly held to attacking military targets only. And this seemed to be of great importance to political leaders because they thought that the war would be short, and they needed a really quick integration of the American South back into the nation. It wasnt really clear emancipation would end, so they didnt want to tick off the people they were fighting against. So they were very scrupulous. Now, to some degree, and you can tell looking at the ruins here, that changed over the course of the war. Slowly a greater number of targets became possible for United States soldiers. So what you see here is the Virginia Military institute in 1864. You know, cadets from this institute went to the battle of new market and opposed general davis hunters soldiers there. Hunter did not appreciate having to shoot at boys, you know, kids who were barely out of puberty. And so when he eventually took the city of lexington in virginia, he made sure he burned the institute down perhaps as a warning to the confederates that that kind of that using children in the war was not something that they would but also this is now a legitimate military target, if its training cadets to fight against union soldiers, its all of a sudden part of the war. These two gentleman one more famous than the other became the faces of destruction for the United States army. You guys know this fellow. William sherman. And this guy, this is philip sheridan. So at the same time that sherman was marching through georgia quite famously, sheridan was marching up the valley, right . So this was he was doing this just after hunter had gone up the valley. And sheridan made sure to burn a great deal of land. He left it rather barren. But, you know, still used, guys, they didnt destroy everything in a way. This was not indiscriminate destruction of property. There was not indiscriminate there wasnt murder on some kind of mass scale. I have little doubt civilians were harmed in this process. Both black and white civilians were attacked. But there was no policy, no conscious policy for doing anything like that. And there was certainly no policy of destroying public buildings, public monuments, the kind of heritage of the antebellum south. Well, maybe there was an exception. So when sherman so you know lets say september of 1864 sermon takes atlanta, which is an amazing prize for the United States army. It essentially seals the election for lincoln. He then marches his troops after waiting in atlanta for a little while, marches his troops down to savannah. Takes savannah just before christmas. Offer it as a gift to his commander in chief who had been reelected to the presidency. And then from there he starts marching up to South Carolina and then eventually to north carolina. Well, when he gets to columbia, well, the city burns. Like a lot of the city burns. Its not really clear who set the fire. A lot of finger pointing during the event and afterward. But what is clear is not much was left of the South Carolinas capitol. Historians think today base clewhatever happened with that, it is clear shermans troops did not really like the landscape or the people they encountered in South Carolina. They blamed the state for starting the war. Now, all that said, what we have is a pattern of a great deal of violence especially against military and economic targets late in the war. And we have a pattern of relative restraint against Cultural Heritage the Cultural Heritage of the south. So what do i mean by restraint . Well, hunter and sheridan i told you marched and burnt their way through the valley, right, as they headed southward. But once they moved out of that valley, they got charlottesville. Had first thing that federal troops did is they rushed to the rotunda to Thomas Jefferson it was landmark building. And they stationed guard there to protect it, to make sure no vandalism would come about. When they got to richmond in the first days of april of 1865 federal troops found the city of petersburg had been lost to them. So the confederates headed out of town. Put the gold on the train, robert e. Lee got on the train and all the top confederates left the sity. And as they were leaving, they set as many Important Documents and artifacts on fire as they could. The fires started here along the river. And the fire started tuo move u. All this black area is area that was eventually learned. The United States went in trying to put out the blaze. They did not want the capitol burnt, the capitol Thomas Jefferson had help construct. They did not want the federal capitol destroyed. These exceptions follow hard upon orders that have been given. In the spring of 1864 lincoln had issued general orders 100. This is known commonly today as levers code. It was compiled by a german immigrant to the United States, francis lebber. He left the south with secession. Well, lebbers considered a lot of Different Things about the laws of war. Among these things is prohibitions against purposely destroying any kind of art, classical buildings. I think the words are possible works of art, library, scientific collection or precious instruments must be secured against all avoidable injury. Thats article 35 of lebbers code. So what you have in immediate war years is destruction of military property, destruction of kme of the south and the physical infrastructure of the economy of the south at the same time you have the souths legal Cultural Heritage. I wish i could say this restraint was carried on by everyone into the postwar years. Actually the first really widespread assaults on Cultural Heritage in the south you find by 1866. Africanamericans in the south are beginning to celebrate their emancipation. This is the one Year Anniversary of the fall of the confederacy. And as africanamericans move into the public spirit and begin to celebrate, they find that the buildings they had built either immediately upon emancipation or even previously in the prewar years, many of these buildings went up in flames. So this is in petersburg in 1866. The former confederates also attacked the chuch in peters bug and one other one. I dont believe those were destroyed in the same degree. And you also have churches throughout the south that are attacked. When dprsz goes to interview people in the south about what has been happening there, they find reports of hundreds of churches and schools burned to the ground. This is really the first major attacks against tultural heritage that we see in the postwar era. Africanamericans for their part, do a number of things in response. In the rural south, its not just its just black churches and black schools that are lit aflame. There are a number theres a rash of mysterious barn burns in the south. So on large plantations you would have barns, huge structures that were really the symbols of agricultural capttism in 1865 and 1866. So what you see is a number of these things mysteriously go up in smoke, that these symbols of economy and these kind of practical instruments of agsetigating the economic wealth of the south were peag destroyed. This was in response obviously to a wave of terror that has been going on from the first day of emancipation an to the reconstruction area. Africanamericans also began to repurpose buildings. And this is a deconstruction. I worked with folks at the university of richmond at their digital scholarship lab. We built a 3d model of the city of richmond. This right here is a structure commonly known as lump kn jail. You would have a combination of some brokers, some octiauctione clothers. Packing, as it were. And its kind of filthy trade. But the jail was a core piece of this. Robert lump kn is interesting because he had a common law wife who was a freed person of color. She upon the end of the war, lumpkin put a number of enslaved people on a train. He took off with them. He tried to get out of richmond along with the confederates and eventually met his end. But what happened in 1865 was his wife took his slave jail and turned it into a school. So this became the first place for the education of africanamericans in richmond. Theres a saying the televisions half acre becomes gods half acre. The school eventually becomes Virginia State university. Now, in this repurposing of public space and in the spaces of the slave trade, africanamericans are also trying to walk a really fine line between joy and between rejoicing in the ways they perceive god to have blessed them, celebrating emancipation without taking off too much. The colored people of richened would most respectfully like to tell the public they do not intend to celebrate the despite the fact theyre going to be performing a parade the day richmond fell into union hands. They say what were celebrating really is emancipation. Its not anything more than that. Its not anything about former confederacy losing. Its about africanamericans gaining their freedom. White southerns did not buy that. Yet the parade still went on. Africanamericans actually began a tradition in many cities of proceeding around the city in celebration. This is a picture from richmond. This is the emancipation Day Celebration in 1905. Really a part of this tradition that began in the very first year after the war. So africanamericans in other words were attempting to do public displays to show that they were now free, that they had access to public spaces. They were transforming the spaces of slavery into spaces for a new kind of Cultural Heritage or a Cultural Heritage of freedom. At the same time they were working toward that, white southerners were trying to figure out what kind of monuments to their dead they would be introducing. How do you memorialize the dead when so many young men up to nearly one out of five of fighting age took casualties . So this massive out pouring, this massive blood letting produced a great deal of grief. And the consolidation of grief went to these groups of mainly elite women that banded together and tried to think about ways to honor those who had died, the confederates who had died. Now, they did this in a particular context. They did this in a context in which much of the south well, many places in the south at various times were occupied by union troops. The United States was very concerned that the south would try to secede again, that the south would try to impose slavery. And in fact if left to their own devices, thats probably what would have happened without the military presence in many of those southern towns and cities. So in a context like that, and in a context in which women are, you know, really are full of grief, what kind of monuments do you get in a situation like this . You get things like the pyramid at hollywood cemetery. This is a cemetery in richmond, virginia that is a monument to the 13th confederate men who were buried in that cemetery. Its kind of abstract. But if the money was raised, then the people at the front were the women. It was the women of the south that created this monument. It was athenian woman who planned and organized declaration day. You all have seen this article before, right . This is what was published on the southern banner. Declaration day was celebrated at different times in different places in the south. But it was essentially confederate memorial day. Here in athens all the poim and all the students and fack alty and firefighters and teachers of the high school and students of the high school, the male academy and female academy and everybody else all gathered at the University George chapel to march around the city. And the ceremony ended at the cemetery laying flowers on the graves. This 1871 celebration, though, is different because it marks the cornerstone for as you guys know, for this monument. The monument now sits just across from the arch at the university of georgia that separates the north campus to the university of georgia, the historic part of campus from downtown just on the other side of the street. If youre going to say the most traveled intersection around town, definitely the busiest pedestrian intersection. The money was raised by the womens Memorial Association of athens. You can see that these very different monuments very early, both created by women. Both in this very kind of abstract style. What are other commonalities do you see between these . They said it was important to opponent out towards the heavens where they soldiers were. Good. So theyre very much vertical in that. Anything else . Who are they erected to . Confederate soldiers. I mean these are very much monuments to the dead and specific dead people. In the athens case the names are inscribed on the base of the monument. In the case of the pyramid, you dont have the 13,000 names written on the period, i believe. But its in the cemetery. And the athens cemetery, we really diverted from many of the monuments eructed at this time because its in a public space. And those monuments erected by the Ladies Monument Association were in cemeteries themselves. Any ideas why they would have not been in public . I mean whats going on here . Why are they leading this . Why are the monuments kind of being erected in cemeteries . There were a lot of charges of treason. So if men were to take on this role of memorialation, then a lot of them would have been and then the cemeteries would consider safe spaces for remembrance of the dead midmore a political statement. Yeah, i think thats really good as far as i can tell. Right, anything from the leadership of women to the placement of the monuments to even the fact that they dont directly honor generals like robert e. Lee, jackson, stonewall. You can see the idea why southerners are constantly being suspected of treason. They may be even being charged for treason. It may be politically difficult to set up a statue to say Jefferson Davis in the middle of a town square, the most treasonness fellow of all. Of course this all changes, right, after reconstruction ends which happens in different times in different places. Where federal troops are withdrawn, where you have the democratic take over of the state governments often through fraud, often through violence. This ends state violence. Yeah, theres still some troops left in the south after this weird ends. The traditional date is 1877. Maybe thats a good date, maybe not. But whats certain is that by the end of 1880s. You have a dramatic upsurge, its a tremendous surge in veterans organizes, in the members in these organizations and in the statues that they create. Confederate veterans, organizations founded in 1899. By 1896 there were local camps by organizations all over the south. By 1899 there were 1,200 of these. The sons of confederate veterans was founded in the mid1890s as was the daughters of the confederacy. Now around 1890 perhaps the biggest and most prestigious monument or perhaps maybe the most famous one was unveiled. So this is the robert e. Lee statue in richmond. It was then at the far west edges of town, enough open space to hold the 100,000 or so people who flocked to unveiling. It was a big deal to wray tithd the tarp. And everyone would cheer and shout for the fallen general. This was actually part of a real estate scheme. The developers were interested in employing new technologies, the streetcar and things like that and pushing suburbinization out to the suburbs. And this was kind of the far end of developed land. So this was a would become a really remarkable prom nod into the city. And have already expensive lots. This is right part of why the robert e. Lee statue is created and unvailed there. The whole time you have this turn to nostalgia starting in the 1890s. The war has been over for a while. Its driven by politics, driven by people trying to make money off other peoples memories. And its also driven by a sincere desire to stick it to the north. And to create a space that white southerners thought would reflect their dominance of the southern landscape. It was an attempt to create a distinct regional and proconfederate identity in the post war world. So we need to think about the monuments, especially the ones that are created after reconstruction in the 1890s. What else is happening on the southern landscape in the 1890s . This is when you have segregation coming into fru rigs. These are gentlemen in county. Standing in front of a segregated train station. So its a multipronged attempt to create a south in which the landscape could be read as one that white men controlled. From these spaces to im not going show actual pictures of lynching. But these are more of what we might consider monumented to the while control of the south. When you have men hanged by the side of the road. Billy hol days song strange fruit immortalizes this. These people are being lifted up at the same time the monuments are being lifted up. The hay day of lynching. 1880s, 1890s this is when you get the large scale public lynchings. Those continue into the 1920s and 30s. And some even later than that, right . Theres web si